As of 2008, the French Embassy in the US started sending out
acceptance e-mails on April 29 with académie assignments (the date was April 6 in 2009). However,
these e-mails did not include the length of the contract nor the level.
The subject line was: Félicitations/Congratulations
! - French Teaching Assistantship Program 2008 - 2009. This is
what the body of the e-mail said:

Congratulations! We are very pleased to inform you of your acceptance
to the French Teaching Assistantship Program, sponsored by the French
Ministry of Education, for the 2008 – 2009 academic year.

You will be assigned to one or several schools in the académie
of [name of académie]. The school (s) in which you are placed will not
necessarily be located in the city of [name of académie]. Around mid-June
your académie
will send you more information, including your city assignment and instruction
level.

If you are unable to accept this position, please send a letter of withdrawal
to Miss Carolyn Collins immediately.

"Contract Clarification" e-mails
containing the length and level of the contract were then sent at
the beginning of July. I do not think the embassy will be sending
out the regular lettre de présentations as they did in past
years.

By the end of May, you should receive an e-mail from Carolyn Collins
(she's the main contact person at the French Embassy in D.C.) that tells
what you should be doing at the moment. (I received it on May 26, 2006.)
You can download the
first e-mail here. The first e-mail/newsletter for 2008-9 was sent June
6 and you can download it here.

If you are accepted into the assistantship program, but decide not to
go to France, you should send a resignation letter to the embassy so that
they can give your post to someone on the waiting list. You cannot
defer the assistantship until the next year like you can with graduate
school. You must re-apply the following year. The organization
that runs the assistant program, the
CIEP, has a rule that you can only be an assistant two times (consecutive
or not). However, just being accepted into the program counts as one time,
regardless of whether or not you actually go to France and work as an
assistant. So even if you re-apply the next year and work as assistant
then, you cannot renew your contract for the following year because according to the CIEP, you've already done two years.

If you are assigned to the académie de Grenoble,
I have written another
page specifically about the orientation and medical visit procedures
there.

June: Waiting

Now you have to wait for your next piece of information (arrêté
de nomination). In the meantime, you should be saving money (at least
$1,500) because you might not receive your first paycheck until the middle
of November (though you can request to be paid at the end of October if
you open a bank account and fill out the paperwork as soon as you get
there). You’ll need plenty of money for food, transportation and
perhaps a security deposit, a few month’s rent, etc. depending on
where you live, plus extra money for travelling during your vacation times.

If you are still a university student, you can buy the International
Student Identity Card (ISIC). You will be eligible for 32,000 discounts
throughout the world (airlines, restaurants, hotels, museums, etc.) If
you are not a student, but under the age of 26, you can get an International
Youth Identity Card. And if you are a full-time teacher, you can get an
International Teacher Identity Card. These cards cost $22, and you can
buy them online through STA Travel
or at a local card issuing office (usually the International Office at
a university.) You will have to put your own photo on the card when you
get it, and it will be valid for one year.

You can research plane tickets prices now, but you might not be able
to get the return date you want yet. Most airlines require the return
date be within 330 days, so if you want to return home in May of the next
year, you’ll have to wait until later in June before you can book
the ticket. Plus you won't know the location of your school or city until
you receive your arrêté. I was in the Grenoble school district,
so I could have been close to the airports in Marseille, Lyon or Geneva,
so I waited until I knew where in the académie I was going to be.
But if you plan to fly into London or Paris and then take the Chunnel
or train to your académie (which might be cheaper anyway), then
you can probably get your ticket before your arrêté arrives.
Just make sure not to leave too early in September in case you don't receive
your visa until the last minute. And beware that your académie
may have the orientation before October 1, so in some cases, you need
to be there a week earlier.

STA Travel, Student
Universe and Travel Cuts
are three great student discount sites for buying plane tickets. STA and
Travel Cuts require that you have an ISIC
card and Student Universe requires verification that you are a student.
I bought my plane ticket from Student Universe for $788 from Detroit to
Lyon, September 26 to May 8, and all I had to do was verify my university
e-mail still worked. STA and Student Universe also allow multi-city tickets
(I flew back from London instead of Lyon), but STA's prices can be a little
misleading (they change once you choose the actual times and flights and
are usually over $100 more expensive that the original quoted price in
the search results.) So overall, I prefer and recommend Student
Universe for plane tickets from the US to Europe.

If you have no teaching experience, you might want to read up on teaching
ESL and/or try to gather some materials to use in your classes. Of course,
you can't really plan lessons until you find out which classes you will
have, but you can try to bring some authentic materials that your students
will be interested in. You can bring a map of your country (or state),
your yearbook from high school, holiday-related items (if you are American,
you will have to teach a ton about Thanksgiving...), peanut butter candy,
etc. Just think about what your students would enjoy seeing and learning
more about. For the theoretical as well as practical aspects (lesson plans!)
of teaching ESL, I've recommended some websites and books on the
links page. And I've uploaded all of my
lesson plans to its own page. You can download them and use them as
you'd like. There is more info about lesson plans in part
4 of the guide.

If you're not yet fluent in French, you should probably take some time
each day listening to French radio, watching French movies, reading French
books, etc. You will be completely immersed in the language once you arrive,
so you need to get used to it. If you've never studied abroad and only
learned French from college courses, you'll need to learn slang and idioms
since those are rarely or never taught in college. I'm continuously working
on my Informal French & Slang page as well as updating my French Listening podcast with authentic, unrehearsed language. I try to read Voici
and Closer (trashy celebrity
magazines) because they are full of current slang. You can also check
out the Anglicism
wiki to learn the current English words that have been borrowed by
the French. If you need help with buildling confidence and motivation in speaking French, try Why French is Easy.

By the end of June, you should receive another e-mail that includes a
list of all of the e-mail addresses of the other American assistants in
your académie. (I received it on June, 26, 2006.) You can download
a copy of the second
e-mail here (minus all of the addresses).

You can also check the Teaching
Assistants Directory at Wikiversity and maybe find a former assistant
that was at your school or in your town. Many people leave their e-mail
addresses, so you can contact them for information and advice. Also think
about leaving your info so future assistants can contact you!